Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

‘There is a chance,’ Alessan said. ‘Especially now. For the first time there is a chance.’ He looked back at Ducas. ‘Where were you born?’

‘In Tregea,’ the other man said after a pause. ‘In the mountains.’

Devin had a moment to think about how completely things had shifted here, that Alessan should be asking the questions now. He felt a stirring within him, of hope renewed and of pride.

The Prince was nodding his head. ‘I thought it might be so. I have heard the stories of a red-headed Captain Ducas who was one of the leaders at Borifort in Tregea during the Barbadian siege there. They never found him after the fort fell.’ He hesitated. ‘I could not help but notice the colour of your hair.’

For a moment the two men were motionless as in a tableau, one on the ground the other on his horse. Then, quite suddenly, Ducas di Tregea smiled.

‘What is left of my hair,’ he murmured wryly, sweeping off his hat again with a wide gesture.

Releasing his reins he swung down off his horse and, striding forward, held out an open palm to Alessan. Who met both—the smile and offered hand—with his own.

Devin found himself gasping with the rush of relief that swept over him, and then cheering wildly at the top of his voice with twenty outlaws in that dark Certandan pass.

What he noticed though, even as the cheering reached a crescendo, was that neither wizard was shouting. Erlein and Sertino sat very still, almost rigid on their horses, as if concentrating on something. They gazed at each other, expressions identically grim.

And because he noticed, because he seemed to be becoming the sort of man who saw things like this, Devin was the first to fall silent, and he had even instinctively raised a hand to quiet the others. Alessan and Ducas lowered their linked palms and gradually, as silence returned to the pass, everyone looked at the wizards.

‘What is it?’ Ducas said.

Sertino turned to him. ‘Tracker. Northeast of us, quite close. I just felt the probe. He’ll not find me though, I’ve done no magic for a long time.’

‘I have,’ said Erlein di Senzio. ‘Earlier today, in the Braccio Pass. Only a light spell, a screen for someone. Evidently it was enough. There must have been a Tracker in one of the southern forts.’

‘There almost always is,’ Sertino said flatly.

‘What,’ Ducas said, ‘were you doing in the Braccio Pass?’

‘Gathering flowers,’ Alessan said. ‘I’ll tell you later. Right now we have Barbadians to deal with. How many will be with the Tracker?’

‘Not less than twenty. Probably more. We have a camp in the hills south of here. Shall we run for it?’

‘They’ll follow,’ Erlein said. ‘He’s got me traced. The spill of my magic will mark me for another day at least.’

‘I don’t much feel like hiding in any case,’ Alessan said softly. Devin turned quickly to look at him. So did Ducas. Awkwardly, Naddo rose to his feet.

‘How good, exactly, are your men here?’ Alessan said, a challenge in his tone and in the grey eyes.

And in the shadows of what was now almost full-dark Devin saw the Tregean outlaw leader’s teeth suddenly flash. ‘They are good enough, and to spare, to deal with a score of Barbadians. This will be more than we’ve ever tackled, but we’ve never fought beside a Prince before. I think,’ he added, in a meditative voice, ‘that I too am grown tired of hiding, suddenly.’

Devin looked over at the wizards. It was hard to make out their features in the dark, but Erlein said, in a hard-edged voice: ‘Alessan, the Tracker will have to be killed immediately, or he’ll send an image of this place back to Alberico.’

‘He will be,’ said Alessan quietly. And in his voice, too, there was a new note. The presence of something Devin had never heard. A second later he realized that it was death.

Alessan’s cloak flapped in a gust of wind. Very deliberately he drew his hood over his face.

THE HARD THING for Devin was that Alberico’s Tracker turned out to be twelve years old.

They sent Erlein riding west out of the pass, as the lure. He was the one being followed. He had Sertino di Certando, the other wizard, and two other men with them, one of whom was the wounded Naddo, who insisted on being of use even though he could not fight. They had taken the arrow from his arm and bandaged it as best they could. It was clear that he was in difficulty, but even more clear that in the presence of Alessan he was not about to give way to that.

A short while later, under the stars and the low eastward crescent of Vidomni, the Barbadians entered the pass. There were twenty-five of them, and the Tracker. Six carried torches, which made things easier. Though not for them.

Alessan’s arrow and Ducas’s met in the Tracker’s breast, fired from slopes on opposite sides of the defile. Eleven of the mercenaries fell under that first rain of arrows before Devin found himself galloping furiously down with Alessan and half a dozen other men out of their concealment in hollows in the pass. They angled to close the western exit, even as Ducas and nine men sealed off the eastern end the Barbadians had entered from.

And so on that Ember Night, in the company of outlaws in the highlands of Certando far from his lost home, Alessan bar Valentin, Prince of Tigana, fought the first true battle of his long war of return. After the drawn-out years of manoeuvring, of subtle gathering of intelligence and the delicate guiding of events, he drew blade against the forces of a Tyrant in that moonlit pass.

No subterfuge, no hidden manipulation any more from the wings of the stage. This was battle, for the time had come.

Marius of Quileia had made a promise to him that day, against wisdom and experience and beyond hope. And with